


we go up

by LilithStarlight



Series: *blows a kiss* this one's for you, diana wynne jones! [1]
Category: NCT (Band), We Go Up - NCT Dream (Music Video)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Attempt at Humor, But also, Cute, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Inspired by We Go Up (Music Video), Loneliness, Love, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sad Mark Lee (NCT), hello renjun, hmm turns out School so updates won't be consistent until i get on top of that sorry kids, learning how to be friends, mark lee doesn't really get emotions but he also does, really it's just what if the we go up mv had a longer plot, renjun is best boy, renjun just Gets It tho, there will be plot in a minute, uhhh idk it's really inspired by howl's moving castle, updates will be weeklyish while i work on being consistent, we go up baby!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25947544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilithStarlight/pseuds/LilithStarlight
Summary: Somewhere, maybe everywhere, maybe nowhere, there is a Room. A Room with a Center Door.And a boy named Mark.He meets some people, makes some friends, and discovers new things.But most importantly, he learns how to love.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun & Mark Lee, hinted huang ren jun/mark lee
Series: *blows a kiss* this one's for you, diana wynne jones! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883230
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue: We Go Up

There’s a Room somewhere, nobody truly knows where. It’s quaint, not too small, not too big, and the soft lighting from the lamps inside wash over the orange walls to create bright spots of life and deep shadows of calm. Couches and chairs and end tables were placed perfectly throughout the Room, with windows and mirrors and paintings lining the walls and with trinkets and house plants covering every available space. On the floor of the Room lay a deep blue carpet, perfect for walking barefoot.

Just to the side of the Room is another, smaller room. The carpet is the same, and so are the colors of the wall. Instead of cozy trinkets and paintings on the walls, in here there are seven doors. There hadn’t always been seven. At one point, there had only been one; the Center Door, as it is called, intricately designed and simultaneously the biggest and the smallest door out of them all. At first glance, it is pitch-black in color, but on closer inspection it becomes a galaxy, the blacks interlaced with blues and greens and purples and all glimmering faintly. At the exact middle of the door is an all-white carving of an hourglass.

If the Room has no explanation, the Center Door has even less. Only one has any knowledge of the Center Door, and it will open for no one else save them.

This is a story of them, of their friends, of the Room, of the Center Door, of time, of holding on, of letting go.

It’s a story of learning to love.


	2. The boy from the room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet Mark, who lives in the Room

It’s a curious thing, being able to open one’s eyes and to understand both everything and nothing.

There is a boy now, sitting in the Room and leaning against the Center Door. As he opens his eyes, he understands who he is, where he is, and what he can do.

His name is Mark, he is in the Room, and he can stay for now.

He can parse through the thoughts in his head, and if he is to try and express these thoughts, he can speak his mind. He can identify things; objects, colors, emotions, descriptions, and more that he isn’t sure he could name just yet. He can stand up, so he does, and he wanders around to the main Room.

As he sits down on (what he somehow knows is) one of the couches, he realizes that what he doesn’t understand is why he is here or how he came to be. And, looking around at the bright orange walls, the shining trinkets, the soft carpet, the sparkling mirrors and the shining windows, he doesn’t think he ever will understand.

His eye catches on something on the table closest to him. Or rather, a lack of something. He frowns.

Where there should be an open space on the table is a patch of the world that has been turned white, as if erased to become a blank sheet of paper.

Curious, he reaches forward, and touches the edge of the white patch. It shimmers slightly, and he quickly retracts his hand. As he does so, the shimmering stops, and the patch is replaced, the world filled in again, with an hourglass.

It’s… Pretty, Mark decides is the right word to think. A pretty hourglass, like it’s made out of crystals and glass. The two shapes that hold the sand look like diamonds. The hourglass is clear except for the white sand at the top; the diamond is completely full. Warily this time, Mark reaches for the hourglass again. When nothing happens, he takes it in both hands to examine it more closely.

It’s beautiful up close.

As he holds it, he sees a singular grain of sand drop to the bottom of the hourglass. Eyes widening, he tips it upside down, hoping for the grain to return. When he flips it back, the same grain stubbornly floats back down again. He sighs. All through his body he suddenly notices a Feeling, something important. In a rush he stands up, clutching the hourglass close, and hurries back to the side room.

Aha!

There, on the Center Door, the hourglasses match! Meaning… Something, Mark is sure. He crosses the distance to the Center Door, then stops just short of touching it. He reaches for the handle. And he pulls.

And nothing.

The door won’t open. The handle won’t even budge.

Then the Feeling is back. _Not yet_ , it seems to say. _The door is not ready yet. Come back when it is, and when you are._

Mark breathes out through his nose. He supposes that for now, he’ll stay, and he’ll see what the room has to offer. He isn’t sure if he has much of a choice.

(He doesn’t think he would want to leave even if he does. The Room, despite its mystery and how little Mark understands of it, already feels like home.)

\---

Little by little, Mark comes to know more about the Room, and about himself. He never learns much more about the Center Door, but he thinks he knows why it’s there. Slowly, so slow it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone else, the sand in the hourglass falls, and Mark comes to believe that whenever the last grains fall, the door will open for him.

He spends much of his time thinking, talking out loud, and creating. (He had discovered that the Room grants reasonable requests, such as creating crafting supplies, along with some things he hadn’t realized he’d needed, like food.)

New things will spring into his mind, things to make that he hadn’t thought of before and the way to teach himself how to do it. He’s never seen a scarf before, but now he has knitted one along with a pair of gloves. He isn’t totally sure what a turtle is, but he now has replica of one made out of green, fuzzy wires.

And while he enjoys making new crafts, feeling the satisfaction of having learned a new skill, there’s a part of him that – and he’ll never say it out loud – wishes the sand will fall faster so he can see what’s beyond the Center Door.

It’s not that he’s bored, or wishes to leave. But sometimes, he wonders what it’s like to be happy, instead of just content or satisfied. Sometimes, he asks himself what the strange, gripping feeling he gets could be, clenching in his chest like it’s icy cold and burning hot at the same time. Sometimes, he thinks something Different would be nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, mark made a turtle out of green pipe cleaners
> 
> see you all next week! the next chapter will be Much Longer dw :3
> 
> ways to help!: https://allcards.carrd.co/
> 
> stay safe, stay healthy!


	3. The Boy from the Clouds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark didn't know he could meet other people, until one day he does

Something Different comes to Mark while he’s learning how to cross-stitch.

It starts with a quiet thrum of energy that he almost doesn’t notice as he’s focusing on threading the needle. It gets more insistent, and when he finally notices it’s like something is humming, too loud, too close on both sides of his head. He drops his work and covers his ears, but it doesn’t help. He keeps his hands there anyway, then stands up to find what could be making the sound. He stumbles into the side room, and as soon as he enters the noise stops. Mark wonders if the Center Door could be the cause. What he sees instead is enough to make him lower his hands in surprise.

Another blank patch has appeared, this one much larger than the hourglass. It takes up almost the same height as the Center Door, nearly the same width too. Mark wonders if he should reach for it the same as the hourglass, nervously extends his hand to the patch. As soon as his fingers brush it, the air shimmers, the same way as it had before. Absentmindedly, Mark wonders what use he could have if an hourglass of this size appears.

Instead of an hourglass, however, a door appears. It looks nothing like the Center Door; it’s a soft yellow, it looks smooth and somewhat soft. It almost seems to glitter from the light that pours in from the Room. Unlike the coolness of the Center Door, it feels warm and inviting.

Mark swallows. He reaches forward again, grabs the handle tightly, and twists the knob. He hears a faint click, and gasps. It’s open. Gently, he pulls the door toward himself, and…

A boy tumbles into the Room.

\---

Mark stares wide-eyed and gaping at the boy as he stands up. He has blonde hair, and he’s wearing. Well, Mark had never really thought about clothes before, even though he always wears something himself, but he’s wearing clothes that remind him of high school, with a dark blue blazer, shorts, and a white sweater. Looking down, it’s similar to what he wears too. As the boy brushes his hand over his clothes, Mark notices that he’s covered in little white puffs that slowly fall to the ground and turn into water puddles once they’ve landed.

Mark stares at the boy some more. He finally notices that the boy is now looking back at him expectantly, probably waiting for Mark to make the first move. ‘What’s your name?’ and ‘Where did you come from?’ come to mind, but of course the first question he asks is-

“Were those clouds?” he blurts out. Then he backtracks. “I mean, on your clothes. Did you have bits of clouds on you?” He cringes at how the question sounds. If this is embarrassment, Mark thinks to himself, then he’d like to avoid it again at all costs.

Luckily, the other boy just smiles. “Sure did! They get stuck to me often.” Then he holds out a hand. “I’m Renjun, and I come from the sky.”

Mark looks at his hand. A little late, his brain supplies him with the word _handshake_ before he hurriedly grabs Renjun’s hand in return. Renjun laughs a little, and it sounds as light and soft as his door is.

“I’m, uhh. I’m Mark,” Mark manages to stammer out, letting go of Renjun as he speaks. “And I come from…” He twists his face in thought. “Here, I think.”

Renjun’s eyes widen. “You’re from the Room?” Mark nods. Renjun smiles again, mouth opening slightly in surprise and delight. “That’s amazing! I’ve always wondered what it might be like here!”

Mark tilts his head. “What do you mean by that?”

“This place is pretty well known!” Renjun gushes. “There’s a lot of people who know about this place, but nobody really knows more than that it exists. It’s a mystery that we never thought would get solved. But here you are. And here I am!” he proclaims.

Mark nods again, processing. Then, “Wait, how did you get here?”

Renjun shrugs. “I don’t know, I was just having a normal day when I noticed that one of the clouds had a… uh,” he scrunches his nose a bit, thinking. “Ah, like a blank spot over top of it!” Marks eyes widen, but he doesn’t interrupt. “Then when I went forward to touch it, a door appeared, and a little voice in my head told me that it would lead me to the Room.”

“I’ve heard a voice like that before!” Mark exclaims, his initial apprehension fading as he realizes that he has something in common with this strange boy. “And I’ve seen the blank spots too, like someone erased the world, right? That’s what happened when your door appeared!”

Renjun nods. “Exactly!” They both smile for a moment before Mark feels a burst of what he decides is excitement bubbling through him. He reaches out for Renjun’s hand again.

“Come on!” he says, leading the boy into the Room. Renjun follows behind him, giggling.

Mark leads Renjun around the Room, showing him trinkets old and new, the windows and the mirrors, the couches and the chairs, and finally-

“Woah!” Renjun exclaims as he sees the hourglass. “That’s beautiful!” He looks up at Mark questioningly. “Where did it come from?”

Mark shrugs. “I don’t know, it came in from one of those blank spaces after I woke up here for the first time. I’ve had it ever since.”

Renjun looks at him quizzically. When Mark raises an eyebrow in question, Renjun finally asks, “When you say you woke up here, do you mean that you were somewhere else before?”

Mark opens his mouth, then pauses. Then frowns. “You know, I’m not really sure. All I know is that waking up here is the first memory I have, but even if I’ve never left, I know what a lot of things are and how many other things work.”

Renjun nods, then seems to accept this. Then-

“Wait, you’ve never left before?”

Mark shakes his head. “No, I don’t have a way to leave.”

Renjun is gaping now. “You don’t have a door to go through?”

Mark looks away. He doesn’t know why, but the sudden question makes him. Uncomfortable? He rubs his arm slightly. “There’s a door here, but I don’t know if it’s Mine. And I tried, but I can’t go through it.”

When he looks up, he sees that Renjun looks saddened by this. Then a determined look crosses his face. He reaches out for Mark’s hand, and he takes it. He feels reassured. Renjun then pulls him closer, leads him back to the side room until they’re in front of the soft yellow door.”

“Come on, Mark,” Renjun says, turning to face Mark. He has a somewhat mischievous look on his face now. “Let’s go on an adventure.”

\---

Mark knows what clouds are. They’re large masses of air, water molecules, and dust particles, they are the cause of rain and snow, and while they appear fluffy, they are decidedly not solid.

And then he takes a step through the soft yellow door.

It’s as if Renjun had taken everything Mark knows about clouds, maybe even about the world, and thrown it out the door. There they both stand, on top of the clouds, looking at a sea of whites and greys and blues. There is still some sky above them, but there’s also sky below them, visible where some clouds are disconnected. Mark doesn’t think he’s closed his mouth since he stepped through the door. Renjun, meanwhile, has not stopped laughing at his expression the entire time.

Mark finally closes his mouth, feeling a little embarrassed again. “How,” he starts, then realizes how tiny and squeaky it had sounded. He clears his throat. “How are we standing here? Shouldn’t we be falling through?”

Renjun, still smiling, answers, “We’re here because we can be.” Mark doesn’t think that makes any sense, but at the same time he understands. Not everything in this world has an explanation. The Room doesn’t, and the Center Door certainly doesn’t either. So, he thinks, maybe standing on clouds isn’t the worst thing to not make sense.

“So,” Renjun starts, “Are you ready for that adventure I talked about?” Mark nods. He realizes that he’s still holding Renjun’s hand when it grips him tighter, and they start running together. To where, Mark has no idea. But he trusts Renjun.

Or he did, until Renjun yells, “Hold on tight!” before taking a flying leap through a crack in the clouds.

Mark can only scream has he feels himself plummeting through the sky, eyes shut tight against the fear of hitting the ground.

He can hear Renjun’s pretty laugh again, loud as ever but quiet against the wind whipping past his ears. He can also hear the smile in his voice when he says, “Open your eyes, Mark!”

Against his better judgement, he does, and they stare at each other’s eyes, one frightened and the other delighted, and Mark can almost find it in himself to relax despite the situation. A moment later, Mark looks down to see a low-flying cloud, and Renjun’s grip tightens once again.

“Get ready!” he calls, and they hit the cloud below. Mark is ready to collapse, but the cloud has other plans as the surface bends underneath their feet, feeling rather spongey, and it shoots them both up, faster than Mark thought possible, until they reach the top layer of clouds again. They fall through another hole, bouncing across the lower layer of clouds a few more times before they finally land back at the top.

Mark is breathing heavily, and looking over, he sees Renjun is too, panting with a huge grin on his face. Mark notices that one of his teeth is slightly bent away from the others, and in the back of his mind he thinks is cute. He smiles back.

Then Mark collapses. As the rush from thinking he was about to fall to his death faded, his legs had turned to jelly and now he’s flat on his back, still panting, and he has half a mind to lay here for the rest of his life, however long that is.

Renjun immediately rushes over, concerned. “Mark, oh my god, are you okay? Was that too much?” He wrings his hands as he crouches down. “Mark, say something, please. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Mark looks at him. Renjun looks genuinely upset. He shifts a bit, before raising a hand and placing it on Renjun’s. The wringing stops, and he holds Mark’s gaze. Mark smiles.

“I’m okay.” Renjun’s shoulders slump in relief. Mark continues, “It was a bit unexpected, but,” Mark pauses. What was this feeling? _Oh_ , he thinks to himself. _I think I’ve got it._ “Now that I’ve done it, it made me happy.”

Renjun stares at him for a bit, searching for something. Then he grins.

“I’m glad,” he says sincerely. Then, Renjun offers up his hands properly, and asks Mark if he needs any help to stand up. He gladly takes him up on that offer, and shakily gets up until they’re both standing together, arms around each other’s shoulders, surveying the clouds once again.

After a few moments, Renjun lets go of Mark’s shoulder to reach down to pick up a chunk of cloud, which Mark didn’t think was possible either. He watches Renjun roll the piece of cloud between his hands until it looks like a sphere. He has no idea where this is going, and Renjun has since stopped rolling the piece of cloud around as he looks across the clouds again, so Mark decides to do the same.

_Pfft!_

Mark feels a soft ball of something collide with the side of his head. He whips around to look at Renjun, who is curled over with the effort of holding in laughter. Mark looks at his shoulder, sees the crumbled, slowly melting remains of the cloud-ball Renjun must have thrown at him. Then Mark grins. If Renjun wants a fight, he’s going to give him one.

They start to chase each other with cloud-balls, running as fast as they can and utilizing the bouncy clouds below (Renjun mostly, but Mark does work up the courage to do it by himself once). They play around, laughing and shouting all the while until they see that the sun is setting. They reunite, and Renjun gestures back toward the door with a tilt of his head. They have gone back to holding hands as they quietly walk, Mark deciding in his head to ask Renjun about sunsets more when they’re not in such a comfortable, knowing silence.

They reach the door shortly.

“Well,” Renjun starts, “I suppose this is where I go for now, it’s getting late and we both need some rest.”

“Yeah,” Mark agrees quietly. Then he reaches for the door.

He hesitates. Pulls his hand back.

Renjun notices.

“Are you okay?” he asks, worried.

Mark doesn’t know how to describe what he’s feeling just yet. He thinks he might one day, but right now, he settles for, “I’m not sure.” He huffs out a sigh, frustrated. Then, softly; “Will you be back?”

Renjun looks surprised at that. Then his features soften. “Of course, Mark. I’ll come around as often as I can, and you’re always free to visit me here.”

Mark smiles at that, relieved. “Thank you,” he says. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

They finally let go of each other’s hands, and they wave goodbye as Mark walks back through the door.

\---

Back in the Room, Mark takes a few steps forward. Then he shuts his eyes tightly, turned away from where he last saw the soft yellow door. Taking small, shuffling steps, he turns to face the wall, slowly opening his eyes once he stops moving.

He breathes a sigh of relief. The door is still there.

He isn’t sure why he was worried it wouldn’t be, but he tries not to think about it. He is able to place, finally, that being with Renjun made him happy, more than just content. And, in spite of the unexpected cloud jumping, he decides he trusts him, too.

He becomes so busy making new crafts and talking to himself about Renjun and what adventures they could have next that he doesn’t notice that today is the first time he’d laughed since he’d woken up in the room, and how the tight, gripping sensation he would normally feel in his chest by now has loosened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> perhaps i love huang renjun :3

**Author's Note:**

> hopefully every subsequent chapter will be uploaded on mondays until i'm finished! i have a few chapters finished and most of this mapped out, so i'm posting it for extra motivation to get done hehe
> 
> let me know if you have any questions, and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> also: ways to help! https://allcards.carrd.co/  
> this links to a lot of other carrds with ways to help with many of the problems going on in the world rn. stay safe, stay healthy!


End file.
